Worth 1,000 words: Face of the week

I don’t know how you spent your Father’s Day (obviously), but mine focused quite a bit on Madeline (pictured here, napping on my lap). Madeline (just under 2 years old, an extremely chatty Siamese/Tabby mix as best as I can tell) and Puccini (same age, classically sweet Red Tabby) moved in this weekend. These are my daughter’s two cats. She has decided to once again consider new directions for her young adult life and has asked her mom and me to take in our grandkitties for some as yet undetermined length of time.

Both, of course, are rescue cats and both have been extremely well loved and seem pretty nonplussed by the move. Our two dogs are genuinely delighted to have the cousins over, what with new kitty butts to smell and the fun shenanigans of cats who are still very much kittens when it comes to behavior. The two family cats they always live with (ages 10 and 12) are both pretty boring in comparison, I suspect.

One of our two cats is handling it pretty well (Tsimmes, as easy going as a cat can be). Isabelle, however, is not taking this quite so amiably. She has been in a foul mood all weekend, a mood she demonstrates by loud open-mouthed hisses and other sounds which would do well in a grade-B horror movie. Quite the big-boned gal, she wanders through the house looking like a sumo wrestler in search of a worthy opponent; this is most peculiar, since she typically she is incredibly laid back and rather shy. So far, everyone — her long term family members as well as the two intruders — are giving Isabelle lots of space. That’s good, but I know if pushed she’d without doubt run for cover under a bed.

Animals are part of the family. Families are rarely easy. But they are family.